sunandshadow said:
Disagree - someone with excellent qualifications might do a lousy job editing, while someone with no qualifications might do a great job editing. Whether you got ripped depends on whether you (because who else is qualified to judge? difficult to take a survey of publishers...) think the book is better after its been edited.
I've yet to see a writer who didn't think the book was better, no matter how rotten the editing job. Whether or not you get ripped isn't a matter of the writer's opinion, it's purely and simply a matter of how well and how professionally the job is done.
Who else is qualified to judge? The agents and editors you send the novel to after it's edited, that's who, and they will know in a heartbeat whether or not the writer got ripped. And far more often than not, the writers gets ripped royally, no matter what the fees are.
No writer who is sane hires someone without serious professional experience to edit a novel. Whether or not an edit is well done and worth the money is not something that's subjective. Good, pro editors do a good, pro job, and they get it right. It isn't a matter of opinion, or of what the writer thinks.
A good editor gets the grammar correct, the punctuation correct, the proofing correct, the syntax correct, the sentence structure correct, and the format correct, all according to the actual rules. No guesswork involved.
When I edit, I always do what maestrowork calls proofreading and copy editing. I believe any good edit includes both of these things. I don't do "light" edits or "heavy" edits, I simply do the job the manuscript requires.
Most editors seriously overcharge. I see no reason at all why an editor you hire should make three or more times as much as the top editors working for the best publishers. It simply makes no sense at all to charge this much, and even less sense to pay this much.
I have never seen anyone with really good qualifications do a rotten job, and I've never seen anyone without good qualifications do a good job. Unfortunately, a huge percentage of "editors" for hire have no qualifications, unless they make them up, and no matter what they charge, or what the writer thinks, it's a complete rip.
The last thing any sane writer does is pay an unqualified person to edit a manuscript.
And I believe completely that any writer is a hundred times better off if they learn to do these things on their own. It's all part of being a good writer.
I also belive completely that any editor knows when to back away. A novel that's written too poorly to help should not cost the writer large sums of money for work that will take that writer nowhere. Nor should a novel that's already good enough not to need the help cost a writer an arm or a leg.
And I'll say it one more time. The last thing any sane writer does is pay someone without very good qualifications to edit a manuscript. It's wasted money, and it's always a major rip.
